When God gives what you didn’t even think to ask for

March 7, 2024

Maria Ephesians 3, God's Provision, Psalm 37, Trusting God, Unbelief , , , , , , Leave a comment

Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Ephesians 3:20 NLT

Is there something that you dread? Some big project or task that has fallen to you?  You can’t see how you will accomplish it, given your limitations as well as the time you have? You probably stress, producing anxiety just imagining it.

That was me in the days leading up to my trip back up to Asheville, just 2 weeks after Mom’s death.

I had agreed to help my sister-in-law, Eve, clear out Mom’s apartment after her death. Steve has a full-time job and Mike had work commitments too, staying home with the cats. The deadline for turning over the apartment to management is next week, if the family doesn’t want to pay another month’s rent to this retirement complex.

I had pictured us working almost nonstop 8-9 hours each day.  Given what I imagined, I didn’t know what to do about lunches, since lunch is one of my two daily meals. I didn’t want to eat out and wasn’t sure what I could bring from either my house for the time away or buy locally.

I was also dreading the work involved in sorting out her apartment, since I pictured it as a HUGE task.

Like anything else, I need not have worried.

In my conversations with Jesus before I departed, I felt him suggesting that I do something a bit ‘risky’. He led me to recall Jesus’ disciples who went out 2 by 2 with no food and no extra baggage.  So, for the ‘fun of it’ and curious to see how the Lord would provide, I traveled light, opting to trust him to ‘work it out’. 

Here’s how surprised me. Eve and her husband, Mike’s brother Steve, have started eating meat after being vegan for a long time.  I had known that but didn’t realize how aligned Eve and I are about food, now that she is a meat-eater.  I ended up cooking 3 of our dinners and we went out to dine at a Brazilian steak house where there was a LOT of meat. It was great.

The night before the first work day I asked Eve what time she eats her first meal. We worked it out for the two of us, stopping at the grocery store to buy what we needed each day.  The lunches I fixed myself were perfect. She happily prepared what she wanted as well.  Eve turned out to be pretty chill about food.

But what was even better was that the work load I had imagined as huge was much lighter.  Because of the Lord’s gracious provision of efficient team work plus my SUV whose back seat folds down, Eve and I wrapped up everything by lunch time of the third work day.  We got to rest and chat that afternoon back at their house.

Nor did we work non-stop.

We took plenty of time to chat, getting to know each other’s heart.  She and Steve have been married only 12 years. Before this visit we had never spent 3 days, just the two of us, talking and sharing.

That was the biggest gift to me. She felt it too. We are much closer now.

So, why did I worry? Why do you angst about the future? I know for a fact that you and I have seen the Lord come through time and time again. You’d think we would learn and finally trust him.

Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in Him, and He will do it. Psalm 37:5 NASB

Your and my unbelief is what keeps us from relying on God at all times.  This sin we must confess each day, asking for his help.  But even though we will continue to indulge in fleshly worry and likely allow ourselves to listen to Satan’s thought-suggestions of lack, we have Jesus’ perfect obedience imputed to us. Jesus trusted the Father always and depended on him for guidance and strength to do the hard things.

May you and I NOT beat ourselves up, but relax in God’s provision and ask for help each moment, not only for the situations themselves but for us to count on him completely. Afterall, he DID create the universe out of nothing.  

First the heart, then the actions

June 17, 2021

Maria Heart, Pain, Prayer, Psalm 51, Sin, Wisdom , , , , , , 1 Comment

Create in me a pure heart, O God, Psalm 51:10 NIV

Let’s face it.  Relationships are hard!  No wonder, since we live in a sin-saturated world.  After all, our perfect world Eden didn’t last long. Eve and Adam disobeyed God, breaking our world’s order and harmony forever. But instead of fix our world at that point, he set about fixing us, with the promise (future – dated for a set kairos event to come) to give us a new world, a renovated earth 2.0.

Back to difficult relationships and today’s focus on the heart.  Like you all, Mike and I live with some regrets and painful sadness about how our interactions with others have gone over the years.  Thinking about an upcoming visit with some family members caused me to worry this morning. I turned to a fresh page in my journal as I started scribbling down my thoughts.  I wrote in clear declarative sentences:  I feel anxious thinking about what we can do differently to reduce the awkwardness we feel around this couple. Even writing this down caused more angst.

I continued: How am I going to have the wisdom to know just what we should change in our interactions? And if God does bring something to mind and we agree about it and then attempt to implement it, that might make us feel even more uncomfortable resulting in us looking ‘pained’. Likely we’ll be so focused on monitoring our behavior and their response that it will appear like we are NOT enjoying them! 

I now felt worse than when I started to identify my worry. But the sweet Father gifted me with wisdom from above. He sidestepped the ‘what should we do, how should we act’ aim of my worry and presented a new and different approach.  What would happen if Mike and I directed our prayers not to relational tools, but instead asked God to purify our hearts?

I stepped further into this new idea and started to write, Father, you who swap out dead hearts for living hearts that incline toward you, YOU know how to get rid of all the junk in our hearts. It’s no big deal for you to drain away impurities such as: regrets, past hurts, memories of visits that did not satisfy, mindfulness of having to ‘walk on eggshells’, fears about what they think of us, disappointments, and unwelcome feedback that we didn’t see coming.

What if you really removed all that ‘yuk’ and replaced it with a heart totally filled with delight and love toward them? Wouldn’t they notice and respond in kind? Wouldn’t we all feel more natural?

All of a sudden, lightness flooded my whole being and the heaviness and sense of being weighed down vanished.  I realized that it’s not first a matter of deeds and actions, but the heart.  Out of the heart flow our actions.

We wouldn’t even have to game plan our responses and actions. What a concept!  We might actually be able to sit back and enjoy their visit AND look forward to it, as well.

I bet you have relationships that perk along quite naturally.  You feel comfortable with a friend or family member.  You don’t TRY to act a certain way.  You simply are who you are and it all works.

Of course, we can still hurt those who are this easy to love.  That’s why good friends still need to practice forgiveness.  We’re going to step on others’ toes because we’re sinners. Genuine friends aren’t afraid to say with soft and gentle directness, ‘ouch….that hurt when you said/did that just now!’.

Thank you, Father, for providing your wisdom from above.  Please, we ask you, do this supernatural work in us.  It feels like it’s impossible, but nothing is impossible for you.

What do you do with shame?

September 15, 2017

Maria 1 Peter 2, Hebrews 4, Isaiah 28, Psalm 23, Psalm 84, Shame , , , Leave a comment

They say shame is the most painful of emotions.  I can attest to that.  My shame faux-pas have been due to utterances.  Words pronounced without thinking, mostly in haste. Not a few times in my life have I said something I soon regretted.  The words used up less than a minute of real life when they burst forth but fueled much replay time in my post-mortem.

Shame brings regret and grief over the possible irreparable change in a relationship.

I experienced a fresh episode of this kind of heavy sadness the other morning.  I had encouraged someone to share an anecdote with some visiting family members during dinner.  Not only was it untimely but unseemly.  I don’t know what I was thinking.  The effect was not good.  And I saw the consequence later on.  So for the next couple of days, I felt heavy and depressed.

But God!

His Word IS living and active – Hebrews 4:12.  He DOES restore my soul –  Psalm 23:3.

How did He lift the burden?  I’ve been slowly memorizing the book of 1 Peter.  I began toward the end of January of this year and it’s now mid-September and I’m about 1/3 of the way into Chapter 3.  The blessing of committing Scripture to heart is that the Spirit of Christ uses it in timely moments.  Like this week.

The promise was this:  1 Peter 2:6  The one who trusts in the Living Stone (Jesus) will NEVER be ashamed/shamed or disappointed or frightened away in haste (as Isaiah 28:16 renders this original fact.)

As soon as God reminded me of His truth, I FELT the shame leave.  My God-given reason kicked in like this:

  • I am one who trusts in Jesus.  And He promises to cause all circumstances/events to work for my good.  Even those that are painful.  And if He says I won’t be ashamed or shamed, then I don’t need to wallow or indulge in that feeling now.
  • Besides, if I believe God truly is sovereign, even over our sin and mistakes, then I can trust Him to bring good out of this.
  • Finally, doesn’t God say in Psalm 84:11 No good thing does He withhold from those whose walk is upright/blameless/without blemish?
  • I regret what I said, AND I am even more motivated to depend on and pray for future self-control over my thoughts and mouth.  And I know that in Christ I am without blemish.  So then God did not withhold this event because He deems it a good thing. I will trust His judgment.

The upshot?  No more shame.  Just a reliance on my Father to heal the damage I did to the relationship and confidence that He is working in me all the time, through falls and victories in Christ.  Christians are entitled and given access to this kind of relief and healing balm NOW through God’s Word.  And for that I am exceedingly glad!

 

 

You wanna change your life?

December 11, 2016

Maria Ephesisans, John 17, Thinking , , , , 2 Comments

Here’s how:  change your narrative.

I think it is that simple.

A friend recently updated me on her warmer relationship with a formerly  (almost) estranged daughter.  This adult daughter repeatedly wanted to rehash childhood pain, assigning blame to her mom.  She maintained that only by revisiting those times could she and her mom reach a healthy place.

My friend decided to ‘change the narrative’.  She practiced a piece of Shakespeare’s advice fleshed out in Hamlet.  You’ve probably heard the adage, ‘assume a virtue and it’ll become yours’.  Here’s the context in this excerpt:

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4, Page 7

Good night—but go not to mine uncle’s bed.
Assume a virtue if you have it not.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this:
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery
That aptly is put on. Refrain tonight,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence, the next more easy.
How did she do it?  By ASSUMING that she and her daughter already had a healthy relationship and then proceeding from there.  In that way, she actually influences the conversations and her daughter has warmed to approach.  Their interactions have grown more frequent and enjoyable to both.
Jesus actually set this precedent long before Shakespeare.  I’ve often read the Upper Room Discourse in John 17 where Jesus makes this outlandish statement to His Father in verse 6:
“I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.”
The disciples kept God’s word???? Really?  What about Peter’s denial or James and John vying for the premier cabinet positions in the new kingdom?
But should we be so surprised when the Bible is replete with bold promises that for those who are in union with Christ, God sees them as pure and righteous.  We are told that the Father loves us, His adopted kids, just like He loves His beloved Son, Jesus.
And maybe that is the key to behaving better, to assume that it is true what Jesus says, what the Father says and act the part.
What if in a marriage locked in an impasse, one partner chose to treat his or her partner tenderly,  as though they were worthy of love and respect?
What if like the Jews carted off to Babylon, they started to treat their new pagan neighbors as though they were just as worthy of love and respect as their own race?
To bring it closer to home?  What if I dropped the narrative built up in reaction to the pain of my first years in my current school?  What if I started to ‘channel’:  God has so blessed me by giving me this job here!  What might change?
I can think of many applications of this principle of rewriting the script to break the logjam of negativity and failure.
I can hear someone say, “But it is not true!”
My one-word quick answer:  ….“YET!!!!”
Lookit….if Jesus can describe his wobbly disciples as those who have KEPT His Word, then we are in good company if we treat others with grace (including ourselves) and interact with them as though they were ALREADY mature….loving….kind.
One further scriptural support.  Consider the grammar of verse 6 in the second chapter of Ephesians.  The verbs are in the PAST tense, meaning the action has been completed. God through Paul informs us that we are already sitting with Jesus in heaven:
For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus.